Making Outsourcing Work for You

A Verizon risk team, looking for data breaches on a client’s computers, discovered one company software developer was idle for many months, yet was productive — because he'd outsourced his projects to a Chinese software developer who'd do all the work and send it back. The employee earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, according to a January Los Angeles Times report, but paid the Chinese worker only about $50,000. The risk team eventually learned sensitive company information was flowing to and from Chinese terminals, leading the company to suspect hackers, but that traffic was just the American employee (“ex-employee” now) sending and receiving his workload. The U.S. man showed up for work every day, but spent his time leisurely web-surfing.